Mary Crowninshield Endicott Chamberlain (Mrs. Joseph Chamberlain)

John Singer Sargent

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a young woman with pale skin and flushed cheeks looks at us, wearing a long, shimmering white dress partially draped with powder-blue fabric in this vertical portrait painting. The brushstrokes are loose in her clothing but blended in her face, giving the portrait a soft, almost blurred look. Her body is angled to our right but she turns to look directly at us. Her dark, chestnut-brown hair is piled loosely on her head. A dark form could be a feather or small hat set to one side. Her eyes may be two different colors; her right eye is grayish-blue and her right eye looks almost green. She has a straight, snub nose, and her fuchsia-pink lips are parted in a small smile. There is a faint suggestion of a cleft in her pointed chin. Her white dress has a low, scooped neck and a tight-fitting bodice over a flaring skirt. Powder blue-fabric drapes over her right shoulder, closer to us, and might be pinned or pulled through a gold ring there. The blue fabric appears on her left hip, farther from us, suggesting it may wrap across her back. The sheen of the white dress and blue fabric suggests silk. The artist signed the work in cursive letters in the upper left, “John S. Sargent,” and dated it in the upper right, “1902.”